First $50 eReader Hits the Market

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Price is a function of time. [URL="http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9819659-7.html?tag=mncol;txt"]3

Rest assured, there will be $50 MSRP e-ink readers that make Kindle 3s and PRS-650s and Nook 2s and what have you look like stone tablets.

That sounds suspiciously like my brother-in-law, a pro software wizard, who many years ago (15+ years ago-ish) told me " computers nowadays are like the Model-T Ford - just you wait, not long now, they will be simplicity itself,,,".

(This was in reply to my constant bleat of "why do computers have to be so complicated, have so many wires, and be so incomprehensible to normal people".)



I ask him every year now, and he does have the grace to mumble a bit !

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

That sounds suspiciously like my brother-in-law, a pro software wizard, who many years ago (15+ years ago-ish) told me " computers nowadays are like the Model-T Ford - just you wait, not long now, they will be simplicity itself,,,".

(This was in reply to my constant bleat of "why do computers have to be so complicated, have so many wires, and be so incomprehensible to normal people".)



I ask him every year now, and he does have the grace to mumble a bit !

Well, modern smartphones and tablets *are* computers.
Might they be acceptably simple?

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

That sounds suspiciously like my brother-in-law, a pro software wizard, who many years ago (15+ years ago-ish) told me " computers nowadays are like the Model-T Ford - just you wait, not long now, they will be simplicity itself,,,".

I'm talking about the hardware, not the software-- computers are not "simplicity itself" because computers are general-purpose devices capable of doing a vast variety of different things-- and will never be as simple to use as a single-purpose device like a microwave oven.

But let's look back at your date of 15 years ago. In 1996, you could buy a Dell laptop with a 10.4 inch screen, 16 MB of RAM, an 810 MB HD, and a 120 MHz Pentium 1 processor for $3549. You could buy a Gateway 2000 Laptop with an 11.3 inch display, 40 MB of RAM, a 1.2 GB HD, and a 4x CD-ROM for $5599. You could buy a desktop with a 166 MHz Pentium 1, 32 MB of RAM, a 1.6 GB HD, and a CRT with a 13.7 inch viewable area for $3671.

Computers of 15 years ago were lumbering, expensive dinosaurs, just as are the ebook readers of today.

[JeremyR]

Rebates are kind of cheating, since I at least, never actually get them.

[Xanthe]

Rebates are usually the kiss-of-death when I'm deciding whether or not to buy something. If the sale is dependent upon going through the rebate hoops, then that product most likely won't be purchased by me.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Computers of 15 years ago were lumbering, expensive dinosaurs, just as are the ebook readers of today.

We're still in the dark ages of computers, imo. My PC's "mid-sized" tower is 18 inches high, and the CPU is cooled by some metal fins with a fan strapped to it; a cooling concept that may actually be 100 years old. We're only now starting to move away from hard drives based on turntable technology.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

We're still in the dark ages of computers, imo. My PC's "mid-sized" tower is 18 inches high, and the CPU is cooled by some metal fins with a fan strapped to it; a cooling concept that may actually be 100 years old. We're only now starting to move away from hard drives based on turntable technology.

My opinion is that computer technology will not be mature until it shaves away every atom that isn't essential to a stable, usable computer. Look at the old days when minimum chip features were thousands of nanometers across-- now, they are only tens of nanometers. (Hopefully, we'll sooner or later be able to work with a handful of graphene crystals and still have a couple of orders of magnitude of processing increases left before we hit a hard limit.) I won't concider ebook reader technology mature as long as the whole reader is thicker than a sheet of paper. They'll likely be grown rather than built.

It is like how you make a statue of an elephant-- you take a marble block, and you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

[covingtoncat73]

I got my Kobo WiFi for about $50 from a closing Borders because a) it was 50% off and b) I had a $25 Borders gift cert. I find it suits my needs.

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Well, modern smartphones and tablets *are* computers.
Might they be acceptably simple?

I can't even get 'em the right way up !!
But they are more like it, I suppose. But idiots like me still find the operational side of computing as complicated as a plate of spaghetti - but with the spaghetti you can just " do it ".


"Computers of 15 years ago were lumbering, expensive dinosaurs, just as are the ebook readers of today. "

Ardeegee - I'll give you the lumbering, but not the expensive, or the dinosaurs, as against today ! My "stack" now is a bit bigger than our first PC, and I still find them a lot of dosh.
Having said that, I have seen recently a neat little stack the size of a paperback: that looked a bit more like it. But they still have the same convoluted software - and you need another one to play DVD's etc...

Oh well, wait in hope.............

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

Rebates are kind of cheating, since I at least, never actually get them.

I've received one for a phone a couple years ago. But, after a stretch where the manufacturer(s) seem to miss my entry, I ignore mail-in rebates.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

I can't even get 'em the right way up !!
But they are more like it, I suppose. But idiots like me still find the operational side of computing as complicated as a plate of spaghetti - but with the spaghetti you can just " do it ".

I dunno, I've seen some serious spaghetti eating messes over the years.
And I'm not talking just three year olds...

One guy I know needs a biohazard suit just to get close to a plate.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Ardeegee - I'll give you the lumbering, but not the expensive, or the dinosaurs

Then we do not share the same definition of "expensive." I'll refer back to one of the 1996 ads I linked. The cheapest computer on that page has a 14 inch CRT, 8 MB of RAM, an 850 MB HD, and a 100 MHz CPU and costs $1776. And what could you do with it? Well, it was reasonably fast for text-based applications-- word processing, spread sheets, etc, but even back then that 8 MB of RAM was a crippling limitation. And you can forget about playing any decent video-- unless you conciser a 320x240x15fps MPEG1 to be decent video. (With my first DVD drive in 1998, I had to have a dedicated decoder card just to play DVD video because the CPUs of the day simply couldn't handle it-- and DVDs are a fraction of the resolution of what I play on my computer today, through the CPU, taking up 10% or less of my CPU power.) You don't even have enough HD space to store much more than text and low-resolution photos-- forget about having a collection of MP3s or even a single movie.

Now, let's look at what Dell offers today-- for $450 you get an 18.5 inch LCD, 4096 MB of RAM, a 1,000,000 MB HD, and a pair of 3,200 MHz CPUs. The modern computer has 64 times the raw CPU speed, 512 times as much RAM, and 1,200 times as much HD space-- for 25 percent of the price. You won't convince me that the computers of 15 years ago weren't expensive.

As for the case size, there is a whole range of sizes to choose from-- I prefer at least a mid-tower because I do lots of tinkering (and have had as many as 4 optical drives in my computer at one time) but you can buy desktop computers that are similar in size to notebooks-- and even smaller.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

The cheapest computer on that page has a 14 inch CRT, 8 MB of RAM, an 850 MB HD, and a 100 MHz CPU and costs $1776.

Compared to the Kindle3 with 256 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage, and ~500 MHz processor...

[siraks]

my cousin bought the aluratek reader last year when we were both looking at ereaders. i ended up with the kobo just recently but he had that for almost a year now and it works great. the screen isn't as white as it could be and the price was $99 when he bought it so for an entry level at $50 w/rebate i think it's great for anyone wanting to venture into this new arena and not spend a ton on an ereader.